


Resurgam

by simplyprologue



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Porn with a lot of Plot, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:03:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7555846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days after a merchant ship bearing the Hewlett family’s colors docks in New York City, he finally finds what has come of Anna Strong. The last time Edmund Hewlett was in Manhattan, he was a part of an occupying army. Now he is a civilian, twice-damned. Once as a former British officer and twice for the crown’s tariffs on the newly-recognized United States of America. And if Anna will not see him, if he was truly nothing more than a pawn to her, then thrice-damned he will be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurgam

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** The title is the Latin for "I shall rise again," and was in popular usage during the late 1700s as an epitaph and a promise. The quote at the top is attributed to Nikka Ursula and her poetry at _Seventy Years of Sleep_. I wrote this thinking it would be some nice short smut, but I'm incapable or nice or short. Smut, however.

_“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we've suffered enough.”_

 

* * *

 

Four days after a merchant ship bearing the Hewlett family’s colors docks in New York City, he finally finds what has come of Anna Strong. There was a paralyzing fear in him, one he’d held for years before he boarded the ship in London six weeks ago — the fear that she’d secured her divorce from Selah and remarried, the fear that she had gone back to Selah, the fear she returned to her noxious affair with Abraham. After all, she held no extraordinary love in her heart for _him._

But she is divorced. Living in a house in Harlem, with Abigail and Cicero. Unattached, though undoubtedly courted by a horde of veterans and wealthy widowers.

The next report he hears, sitting in an office at port, is that she co-owns a tavern with Robert Townsend (who _wasn’t_ a spy, he wonders, the sting of betrayal distant now, and impersonal) and reputedly writes a column under a male pseudonym for a Federalist newspaper and associates herself with a circle of former rebels — _revolutionaries,_ he corrects himself idly — and their families ranking as high as the Hamiltons and as low as her childhood friend, the former Lieutenant Caleb Brewster. As far as his employee has heard, the Woodhulls remain in Setauket, and Anna Strong rarely leaves the island of Manhattan but to visit with Colonel Tallmadge in Connecticut.

Reading the report gives him a small measure of hope. But it does not provide him with any bravery.

The last time Edmund Hewlett was in York City, he was a part of an occupying army. Now he is a civilian, twice-damned. Once as a former British officer and twice for the crown’s tariffs on the newly-recognized United States of America. And if Anna will not see him, if he was truly nothing more than a pawn to her, then thrice-damned he will be.

 

 

 

Days pass her by with a thrum of monotony. Anna Strong has secured her freedom, political and personal. The signing of the Treaty of Paris six months prior assured that she would live and die as an American woman, and Selah at last conceding to affix his name to the divorce decree assured that she would never have to tie herself another man she did not love ever again. She is beholden to no man, in truth. Not Selah, nor Abraham, not Simcoe.

She knows that she should be happy, or something approaching the proximity of satisfied or content. But she is not.

The days managing the tavern grind her thoughts into a fine powder, fine enough to seep out of her mind without bearing them much due. Most days she succeeds in not wondering what came of Edmund. Other days bleed into nights that she lies in bed, unable to sleep, envisioning what her life would be now had she convinced him to elope to Scotland, had she gone ahead with the wedding in Setauket against her best instincts and the warnings Abe gave her, had told him that night in the tavern that she loved him, had she boarded a ship to Scotland after Yorktown or a dozen other twists of circumstance she’s imagined these three years past.

 

 

 

What happens is this: he does not to presume to visit her at home with an invitation. Late in the evening, he goes to her tavern. Not so late that it will be emptied, and she will see him the moment he walks through the door — if she is there at all, he does not know how involved she is in the day-to-day needs of the business, but if he knows Anna — but not so crowded that he would not have a chance to even see her among the throng. He sits at a table near the door, heart pounding in his chest.

Of course, she recognizes him the second he passes through the door.

She knows the face of every man who comes into the tavern, and she would know his face from a hundred paces despite the differences the years have brought. Her foot halts in mid-air, and as her stomach leaps into her throat, she cannot help but to level a hungry gaze on his person. At first she tries to convince herself that it _could not be Edmund._

This man does not wear wig, but has long dark hair. This man walks with a cane. This man is dressed in French fashions. This man — this man is certainly Edmund.

Fingers fussing with the keys secured at her waist, she steadies herself with long measured breaths. Her head is light, vision skittering sideways for a moment until she swallows hard and forces herself to put her foot down and continue to the ground floor. What is she wearing? Is her hair tidy? Does she have dirt on her face? She smooths her hands down the front of her bodice and shakes out her skirts. Anna knows the moment he sees her; his eyes are a heavy weight.

Hewlett can scarcely breathe; he is forced to remind himself to draw breath.

 _She is beautiful._ In the years of their separation, he has clung to the vision of her in brown linen, patterned with ivy. That night her eyes were ringed with exhaustion, face pale. She was afraid, he knows now. Her gown tonight is a deep emerald silk, shimmering in the candlelight. The neckline is low, buttressed by inches of white lace. Her hair is styled, her ears dotted with pearls. The report of Anna being a wealthy divorcee was correct, or correct in estimation of how she wishes to be seen.

But her face is inscrutable. He knows she’s seen him, but her expression betrays nothing. Her features remain unchanging, except at her lips, which purse together into a grim line.

Hewlett strongly considers the benefits of a retreat.

Until Anna goes to the sideboard, extracting a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Gaze settling on nowhere in particular, she walks to the table he’s claimed. The bottle clinks as she sets it down, and he watches her with awe plastered to his face as she gathers her petticoats, and sits. She pours them both a drink, and knocks back hers.

“Edmund,” she murmurs, looking at the bottom of her glass.

Tentatively, he takes his. “Anna.”

“I thought I would never see you again.” She sets the glass down, struggling to look at him with a level gaze. “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”

“That… was true, yes.”

Or it felt true, when he said it. It felt like it was what he was supposed to say, when he was supposed to be angry and scorned and vindictive. And he was, he thinks. But then he reported to John Andre that Abraham Woodhull was the only spy in Setauket, and spared her the gallows. That is the mark of how she changed him; his duty is to his own soul and by that own measure, to her, above any king or country or army. By God has Anna left an indelible mark upon his soul.

“You said… it was time for you to quit me.”

“I didn’t do a very good job.” His voice betrays him, as does his hand. It trembles. “I tried living without you, Anna. I decided I’d rather not do it.”

She finds herself unable to gather a response, mouth gaping and closing and opening again. This makes no sense, for Edmund to blunder back into her life without warning or preamble, to come and immediately speak words like _these_ to her. It is senseless, as so much of her life has proven to be. She cannot reason what Edmund has come to accomplish, by returning to this country that delivered unto him so much pain.

“But you never wrote,” she says. “You didn’t come back.”

Her throat closes down on the last of her words, so that she must choke them out.

“As soon as I heard a treaty was signed, I started packing. I was on the first ship in our fleet that was headed for New York.” Hewlett lets his glass land on the table, still undrunk. Reaching across the breach, he takes both of her hands, imploring her. “I don’t — I don’t care anymore. I was miserable after I left New York three years ago, more miserable than after you accused me forcing you to — I thought leaving America would make it hurt less. It didn’t. Distance hasn’t helped. Time has only made things more acute. And I—”

He falters.

“Edmund?” she asks softly.

“I cannot stop thinking of you sitting across from me at a different table, in a different tavern,” he croaks, thumbs tracing circles over the backs of her hands. For a long moment they are both silent, trapped in their recollections of their parting. The setting around them ceases to exist, the bawdy shouts and dim chatter and tinkling of glass and porcelain — it all fades.

It is hard to suppose what they might have done differently, now that they are reunited.

They made the correct decisions, for their families and nations and friends and their own survival, decisions that doomed their marriage before vows were ever exchanged.

“Yes?” he asks, noticing her staring at him.

“Perhaps we should relocate to one of the unoccupied rooms upstairs?” Her eyes brim with tears, though she stifles the warble of emotion in her voice. She thinks for a moment of suggesting her office, instead. More proper, but so very near the kitchens and people looking to interrupt her for the sake of business. Sniffing, she squeezes his fingers. “For privacy?”

“Yes,” he answers, stammering, “perhaps that would be wise.”

 

 

 

The room she selects is her favorite of their lodgings, and as her favorite it is only rented to her favorite patrons. Seeing as none of them or any other men of genteel or respectable station have sought a room for the night this evening, it is vacant. Keys jingling as she sorts through the ring, she feels his presence looming behind her. She feels clumsy, a thrill of exhilaration surging through her as she fumbles the correct key into the lock and turns it.

Although the fireplace is unlit, the room is warm — it resides atop the kitchen. It takes her a moment to strike the flint and light the candles, so that they are not sitting in darkness. When she turns back to the door, Edmund is still standing there, wringing his hat in his hands.

“Please, sit.” She gestures to the bed.

Without the sounds furnishing the tavern’s main hall there is a marked silence between them. The soles of his boots sound heavily on the floorboard as he crosses the room, and sits where she’s indicated, hanging his hat on the corner of the bedside table. She, however, does not make a single movement but to close the door and secure the deadbolt.

Once again she is unable to look at him.

“Say something,” he says. This was _her_ idea, to come up here and converse, but now she has fallen mute.

“What do you want to hear from me?” she asks, barely audible.

Because she has already decided that she will say anything, anything that will make him stay this time. Anna does not think she could bear it if he sailed away from her again, let alone because of something that tumbled thoughtlessly from her lips.

“I have only sought the truth from you, Anna.”

It is as much a condemnation as it is a plea. Nodding gravely, she takes one step towards him. Then another. Until she is at the bed, accepting a proffered hand from him so she could sit beside him. They are close, legs nearly touching. If she looks up, she is certain their faces would be inches apart. But how many times did they find themselves pulled so close? There were days it seemed a wonder that their mouths did not meet at the end of every soft-spoken sentence.

“The truth…” she murmurs, pulling his hand into her lap.

“Yes.”

Hewlett forces her to regard him, lifting her chin with the backs of his fingers. His eyes are the same dark mysterious color as they’ve ever been, a question of blue or green or brown, depending on the light. Now they are nearly black, glinting in the candlelight.

“Well, isn’t the truth just a matter of circumstance? Anything can be true, from a certain point of view,” she demurs to his displeasure. When he opens his mouth to protest, she places her pointer and middle fingers on his lips. “I know what you mean, Edmund,” she sighs. “I’m just a tired woman, is all. It was a game I long played. Now I hardly know how to live without all the lies.”

They become a mess of hands, entangled and moving, until his stop to frame her face with a gentle touch and hers languish in the folds of her skirts. She does wish to reciprocate, to chart the stern angle of his jaw or distinguished cheekbones, his pliant mouth. It seems too simple, to return to the easy affections of old.

He cannot want this.

It would be too kind to her.

“I have only ever wanted you,” he says. From the moment he first knew her, that much was plain to him, striking him like a bolt of clarity through the fog. And it was not until he read in the broadsides that the war with the colonies — with _America_ — was resolved that he realized there was precious little keeping him from seeking what he wanted. Especially not with the family business at last recovered from their earlier plight.

“The spy?” she asks, the smallest smirk playing on her lips.

“The _woman,_ Anna.”

Their noses bump against each other; they are so close to exchange breath, warm on each other’s mouths and chins. Blinking drowsily, she gives herself to his touch, his hands cradling her face. Oh how she wishes to meet her mouth with his, or to bury her face into his shoulder. Anything to bring them closer yet.

“I did love you, you know,” she whispers, eyes flickering between his gaze and his lips. The war kept her busy, but when the fighting was over she had no option but to examine herself and her own heart and determine that her loss was greater than she originally conceived. “I lied to myself, made myself believe that what I felt was not love, so when I didn’t tell you how much I — so that it would be honest. I deceived myself.”

“Why?”

“You weren’t safe here.”

He feels irritation rise in him. What is it about him that makes her think him so weak? But he knows what he has survived, more so than she. “Is it not my prerogative to decide how much danger I will allow myself to be in? And would you not rather marry a brave man than a craven one?”

One of her hands rises from her lap to bat at his shoulder, and remains there. _I would rather have you, Edmund, and have never thought you craven._ But that is not the reply that she wants to give, it is not what she needs him to know. Her fingers play with the seam of his jacket, nails scraping over stiff grey wool. If only she wasn’t so nervous; she tries to convince herself that the year is no longer 1780, that this is no longer life or death. Their fortunes have risen, in that case.

She is assailed by a fresh wave of tears.

“I thought… I thought if I could save you, save just one good man, then the cost of everything I’d done wouldn’t be too high,” she says, beseeching him. Her eyes, wide and dark and deep, are all the convincing he’s ever needed. “I’d lost so much. I’d sacrificed so much. But if you were alive, safe from me and all of us, then it was worth it. Losing everything else, so the revolution would succeed.”

One tear drips down her cheek, the trickle that breaks the dam. Heaving sobs wrack her frame, and she struggles to regain any of her composure. Is it possible that she has not truly mourned what she threw away until this moment?

“I do not think you’ve lost everything,” Edmund soothes her, stroking her cheek. “Look at all that you’ve built.”

Her response is an unladylike snort, inhaling a tear that had the misfortune of dripping down her nose.

“Money concerns me not.”

“You’re not happy?” he asks with no small amount of tenderness.

“I’ve started fear I do not know how to be happy.” In all her introspection, she cannot pinpoint the exact moment she was led to believe that love was a bloodsport. All she knows is that Edmund was a victim of it. “But I was happy, with you. When we were together I was happier than I’d been since before Abraham left me, before my father was executed, before I married Selah to save myself from destitution.” It was the best decision she could have made at the time, she reminds herself. Some day she will learn how to forgive who she used to be. It is not today. “You made me happy.”

Her voice breaks.

“We might have made each other so happy,” he rasps, bending to bring their foreheads together. It has not been half an hour since he walked into the tavern, but they have fallen back into step — it feels like an absurdity. Neither of them know how to act, except to act on how they feel. Perhaps it is all they can do, after all this time. “Is our chance lost, dear Anna?”

_I dearly hope not._

“Only you can answer that.”

And answer her he does — with a kiss.

 

 

 

Hewlett loses count of the pins that he pulls from her hair. The drop curls are innumerable, his fingers coated in rose-scented powder from their quest to unloosen all of her dark locks. Unlacing her gown is another near-interminable task, but he gladly suffers through the layers upon layers of clothing hiding her body. Her mouth seeks his, and she sucks on his bottom lip, drawing it into her mouth. It slows his progress on her stays, and allows her to get him out of his waistcoat and unfasten his breeches.

“Should we do this?” he asks, but she is more experienced in this than he.

Her answer is a drawn-out laugh. “They assume things of me, as a divorced woman. I might as well prove them right with a man that I — that I love.”

“I would marry you tomorrow,” he mumbles against her mouth.

The last of her petticoats floats to the floor, puddling at their feet. They step over it together, navigating back to the bed. She giggles again, but he knows her words are serious. “I would not give up my freedom so easily, Edmund.”

“Do you think I seek to bound you?” he asks, just as jovial as her, and just as serious.

“I am weary of having to sacrifice one thing in my life to receive another,” she sighs, letting her head fall to one side. “But no, Edmund. I do not think you seek to bound me. But we are both too old to be so hasty. We have not spoken these three years past, and if I were to do the unforgiving arithmetic it would be closer to four. Love is not enough. It wasn’t enough the first time, and you know that as well as I.”

“That is an… astute but unforgiving assessment.” It is kinder than the supposition that they might have thrived, had they loved each other more. Sweeping her hair off her shoulders, he stands behind her and pulls at the laces of her corset. “We would be less careless, this time.”

“I acted with great care,” she answers indignantly.

“That was not the right word.”

“I will concede there are fewer obstacles in our way, now.”

He finishes releasing her from her stays, lifting them up over her head. Hesitating, he is unsure of where to put them, and startles when she knocks them from his hand and lets them land atop the pieces of her gown on the floor.  

“Do you no longer wish to marry me?” he asks more evenly than he would have thought possible.

Will he still lay with her if her reply is no? His scruple has always been about lust and fornication, not intercourse outside the bounds of wedlock. There is an honor, he supposes, in being so ardently in love that he is willing to risk reputation and disregard propriety. Anna lacks any concern whatsoever — and she _does_ love him. And by God does he love her.

But like she said, love is not enough.

She places her hands on his chest, fanning her fingers out over the front of his shirt.

“Where would we live? Would you allow me to continue with my own business ventures, continue to conduct myself in public as I choose? Would you control the accounts? Where would our children — if there were to be any — be raised? Be educated?” All these questions she poses carefully, with great thought. “These are conversations we never had, Edmund. They were of no importance during the war, but—”

“Years have passed.”

They were preoccupied with just surviving, then.  

“Yes.”

But contemplation may save them now. They mustn't rush into anything — they have lost so much time already to lose to another haphazard folly. Thinking on his words, he sinks down onto the bed, absently pulling Anna into his lap. She comes willingly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her fingers card through his hair, and he shivers.

“When I returned… when I left, to return home, I could not have conceived of the family I was returning to. My mother wrote none of the truth of what had come of the company, or my father,” he begins, voice low and steadfast. He is not sure for how long it will remain either of those things. “My sister, the sweet girl I remembered, was gone. And that was in some five years’ absence. She had been forced to strangle the sweetness in her, to compensate for our father’s vice.”

Anna, thankfully, says nothing. With a soft hum, she rests her cheek against the side of his head.

“He had taken to drink, when the port of Boston closed and we lost so much. With business so poor he mortgaged the trading company to the hilt, and when I bought my commission and left… though, mind you, I would not have been much help. But Verity, it seems, has a head for economies and trade. She salvaged what she could, and sold the rest of the contracts to the East India Trading Company.” An old guilt rises up in him; he abandoned her, despite her best assurances that his salary provided the capital they allowed her to save them. But Verity is nearly twelve years his junior, the shock of his parents’ middling years. They had never been close until recent events, but he is duty-bound to her. “Then about a year ago now, our father sobered up enough to take control back from her and put all of her efforts to ruin. When the bailiffs came calling for his debts, he put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

There were only a few minutes between the first knock at the door and Verity’s furious curses and the sound of a gunshot from the upstairs. He knew what he would find when he opened the door to his father’s study, but that did not make it any easier. And in the aftermath, Verity rebuilt it all over their father’s dead body — he thinks it may have been then that he resigned himself to loving Anna for the rest of his life.

The strength of women, despite the men in their lives.

“Edmund. My God—”

He cannot let himself indulge in her sympathy, not yet.

“My mother now lives with wealthier relations in London,” he continues blandly. It is not that he does not love his mother — rather that now he is keenly aware of how fallible she is.

“Who runs the company?” Anna asks. “Does it still—”

“In name, it is mine, as the only living male heir.” He looks up at her with a miniscule grin. “But it belongs to Verity. She could do more with it than I ever could — she saved it from the brink of dissolution not once but twice. She manages the operation from Edinburgh, fending off our mother’s mercenary attempts to marry her to any gentleman boasting five thousand pounds a year.”

“Your sister sounds like an extraordinary woman,” Anna murmurs, scraping her nails over his scalp, soothing him.

“She is.” He sighs, pressing his face into her chest. “She deserves better than her lot.” Hewlett can think of another woman for whom the sentiment also holds true. Her breaths are soft vibrations in his ear, her heartbeat a calming cadence. “So you… you would not interfere in my affairs.”

“No, dear Anna. I would not.” He presses a kiss to her collarbone. “And I would live wherever you lived, and we would raise the children however you wished so long as I could educate them on the arts and sciences. I would only ever wish to make you happier, as your husband. Your grief would grieve me, as well.”

“I would… perhaps like to travel. I have never left New York,” she says haltingly, carefully selecting her words, formulating her sentences in her head before ushering them out of her mouth. He shifts, tumbling her out of his lap. She lays out on the coverlet, arms akimbo above her head in a bed of curls and waves; she continues, unfazed. “As much I am a Patriot, I would like to see more of… you are more worldly than I.”

“I have a ship, and an amenable sister. And business, in many port cities.” He strokes her ankles, then her calves.

“Where could we go?” she asks, eyes sparkling in the dim light.

“The Caribbean, if you were wishing.” He thinks Anna might like Nassau, not despite the history of piracy but because of it. “The French Riviera. The East Indies. Bermuda. And I have spent some time in Italy, myself.”

“Anywhere in the world?”

“Anywhere.”

“I suppose there are stars enough in all of those places to keep you occupied,” she says, lips shaping into a gentle smile.

Clad in only her chemise, he can see every curve of her body. Tentatively, he skirts his hands up to her knees, then her thighs. This is sweeter than any of his fantasies, her skin warm and supple and without giving it much thought, he squeezes the top of her leg. “You are occupation enough, my dear.”  

“I will marry you, Edmund,” she tells him, remarkably tranquil for someone whose life has inverted on itself within the confines of a single hour. “If you’d have me as your wife.”

Again, his answer is a kiss.

 

 

 

While they are contented with kissing — exploring each other with tongues and teeth — they can only be contented with it for so long. His hands come up to cup her breasts, experimenting with how to touch her for her pleasure. Mouth following his hands, he grips her waist next, then her hips. Anna twines her legs around him, pulling him close, and wonders if Edmund is still so inexperienced.

Vaguely, she also wonders if Robert is capable of fending for himself downstairs, but then decides there are worse fates he could be left to. Besides, when they supped at his father’s Saturday past, Samuel _did_ warn him to not let her work so hard.

Edmund drops his hips, riding them against hers.

There is precious little clothing between them, and she feels his erection pressing against the inside of her thigh. God, she wants this.

Wanting has never been her problem.

Or maybe it has been. Wanting the wrong things, at least, a glut of wretched decisions and toxic affairs. But wanting Edmund is the right thing, she knows that it is. She looks at him and she sees a full horizon. She can see the way forward, and she knows it is hand in hand with him. Hand in hand, and…

She rolls them so that she’s on top.

“Is this alright?” she asks against his lips, seaming his mouth with her tongue.

He nods, still charting the topography of her body with hungry hands. Sitting up, she removes her chemise, tossing it away. He looks at her like she’s a goddess, sliding his hands up her belly to her nipples, thumbing them to hard peaks. She thinks it's time for him to lose the rest of his clothes as well, and their combined efforts have him naked in a few quick motions.

The mood is solemn, somehow — their bodies meet to make a vow.

He brushes her hair away from her breasts, gathering it in one hand and fisting it at the nape of her neck. Drawing her down, he kisses her again. It’s delicate somehow, his lips just barely touching hers — more of an exchange of breath than a kiss.

Anna wonders if he’s nervous.

He is, of course. As always, he finds himself desperate to impress her. He has also never been so aroused in his life — and besides, Anna is more learned in this realm than he is. It is for the best if she takes the lead. _Tell me what to do, how to touch you._ He wants to please her, but he suspects his youthful study of romance novels will not aid him in this endeavor. There is only so much that book learning can accomplish, besides. At some point one must venture out into the empirical collection of evidence.

Anna eclipses his thoughts by lowering herself down onto him, effectively erasing all cogency from his mind. His body rocks up to meet hers, and she moans. It’s the most delightful sound, thick with desire. Lacing their fingers together to give herself leverage, she starts circling her hips — it’s bliss.

Moving over him, she looks down at him with half-lidded eyes. Her pace is unhurried, and he’s grateful — it would be so easy to be overwhelmed. A flush spreads over her cheeks and neck, then further down, to her chest. She is aglow, eyes catching in the candlelight, hair shining like burnished copper. She asks again, “Is this alright?”

“Come closer.”

A smile on her kiss-bruised lips, she releases his hands. With one of her own, she braces herself on the headboard, lowering the careful arch of her body to his. He wraps his fingers around her wrist, feeling the flex of the lean muscles in her forearm as she thrusts herself down onto him. Her other hand lands next to his head on the pillow, and she lowers herself further as he strokes his thumb over the delicate skin covering the blue veins at the inside of her wrist. Anna quivers, pinning her knees in to the sides of his waist.

Burning tension builds at the base of his spine, but he does not want to reach his peak before her. Breath catching, he trails the pads of his fingers up her back, then back down to her hip. “Show me how to please you.”

Wordlessly, she takes his hand from her hip and moves it to her folds. Her touch directs his, and he knows he’s learned her right when she gasps, jerking her hips forward. So he does it again, circling in tighter at the tender bud. She flutters around him, a sensation he’s unprepared for, and without thought he braces his feet on the mattress and drives up into her. Anna gasps again, her head falling forward, hair coming to curtain both of their faces.

“Edmund!”

“Is that — is that good?” He presses his thumb in against that spot, riding against her as she moves. Then he tries rubbing over it again, hoping to elicit the same response from her as before.

She clenches around his erection, driving them both to madness. “Dear heaven, don’t stop.”

Together they move into a clumsier rhythm, their bodies just a half-beat off from each other. But it works all the same, slow and patient as they’re willing to be. Anna reaches climax with a shudder and airy moan, bearing down on him as she shakes inside and out. He thinks it’s magnificent, and cannot look away. She is a star going supernova, reaching that final titanic explosion. If she never says his name again after this moment, he would be satisfied.

“Edmund, oh my — Edmund!”

Then without warning, he is swept away as well.

 

 

 

“What shall we do now?” she asks him later, when their bodies are cooled. They are abed, and she curled into his side with her chin resting on his chest. “We could make a scandal and re-emerge downstairs for some supper. Knowing Robert, he’ll have already sent word to Ben and Caleb that we’re being invaded again.”

“Is that what I did?” Hewlett muses, playing with the ends of her hair.

His own is a mess, he’s sure. The queue could not have survived the trial of intercourse, but he worries more for how they will locate all of Anna’s hairpins in all of their mess.

“Some might call it that.” She grins impishly.

“Oh.” He blinks, understanding her now. _“Oh._ Anna…” 

Laughing, she kisses the nearest patch of skin available to her, then rests her cheek over his heart. “One if by land, two if by sea…” She hums, sketching circles and nonsensical shapes with her fingertips. “Three if by—”

“Detaining ourselves in this room was your suggestion,” he interrupts, wrapping a curl around his finger. He imagines he will enjoy indulging in this particular liberty in the future. “I might remind you, Mrs. Hewlett.”

“Getting ahead of ourselves, are we?”

She wraps an arm around him, then a leg, before planting herself on top of him like a flag into virgin soil. Lofting an eyebrow, she looks at him with feigned indignance before settling herself against him again. In this position, there is an adequate amount of her skin against his. They have perhaps another hour before someone starts searching for her in earnest as the tavern closes down for the night, and she must send word to Abby and Cicero that she will be spending the night here. Then there is her appointment with her banker in the morning, and a new gown to be brought and her hair to be restyled… but those are all things she can consider later.

“It might be argued that the change in nomenclature is rather tardy,” he responds without a trace of malice or remorse. “I fully intended to begin calling you that years ago, as you might recall.”

He kisses the top of her head.

_Better than never._

Mouth turning into the shape of joy, she replies, “Then I suppose there is no harm in setting things to rights.”  

 

 

 

Within the month they are married, and on the passage to the West Indies. Edmund Hewlett has never been fond of long voyages at sea, but he finds having Anna in his cabin makes the prospect much more enjoyable.

The sand is white and sticks to her toes, and she lifts her skirts in her hands to wade out ankle-deep into the cerulean waters. It is as if she has never felt the sun on her face before this.

He takes her hand; she has never felt so warm in her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are always very much appreciated.


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